Heading into the third round of F3, two-time race winner Gabriele Minì is third in the championship standings, five points off championship leader Luke Browning. After a positive start to the season, he spoke to Feeder Series about his results so far and his anticipation for his home race in Imola.

By Tori Turner

Minì entered the 2023 season as one of two returning race winners on the grid, with two race wins and a further two podiums under his belt.

While he finished seventh last year as a rookie with Hitech GP, Minì entered 2024 with the pressure of racing for reigning teams’ champions Prema Racing, with whom he won the 2020 Italian F4 title.

Entering 2024 with aspirations of a second championship in cars has necessitated a change in mindset for the 19-year-old Alpine Academy driver, who now realises he must maximise points even when encountering setbacks.

“I would approach it in a different way,” he said about his 2023 season. “It was either win or lose; it was not to win or get points.

“Now, it’s either win or get points. For example, in Bahrain, I know it was not the greatest of starts, but we tried to gain position. In the end, we didn’t have the pace. it was really just a train to follow, and it’s impossible with the overheating and things like this.

“In the end, yes, it’s a frustrating weekend, but you still get 12 points, which is not nothing. It’s still important in a championship like this.”

Four top-seven finishes in 2024

Last year in Bahrain, Minì took pole position in his first-ever F3 qualifying session. This year, he began the weekend with 28th position in practice after a spin at Turn 4. He bounced back in qualifying to secure third on the grid for the feature race.

Minì has qualified in the top three in both sessions this year. There’s good reason for him to focus on qualifying too, as he believes that qualifying well is crucial in the series.

“The only thing is that you need to put in a good quali, first of all, because that’s the key in Formula 3. Unless you are crazy quick in the feature or let’s say races in general, it’s hard to overtake,” he said, sharing a similar sentiment to fellow F3 drivers Alex Dunne and Martinius Stenshorne.

That was borne out in the feature race in Bahrain, when Minì lost three places at the start and was left sitting behind Trident’s Santiago Ramos for the remainder of the race. He came across the line sixth.

Yet in the sprint race, he made up four positions to rise from 11th to seventh after overtaking Sami Meguetounif on lap 7, Christian Mansell on lap 13, Mari Boya on lap 15 and Browning on lap 17.

“We saw in Bahrain, for example, [that] I was quick, but sometimes I was not the quickest on track and still managed to gain a few places,” he said. “On Saturday, you just need to send it a bit more if you’re starting from the back, like it happened for the moment, because with P3 and P2 [in qualifying], you start basically out of the points. You just need to send it, being smart, because you don’t want to get a penalty for Sunday and still you need to have a decent pace.”

In Melbourne, Minì topped practice and was in contention for pole position, challenging fellow Italian Leonardo Fornaroli but missing out by 0.019 seconds.

In the early stages of the sprint race, Minì came alive to gain points. Starting P11, a position out of the points, Minì had to overtake to keep up his points-scoring record. He picked off his rivals one by one, passing fellow Alpine junior Nikola Tsolov on lap 2, Fornaroli and Browning on lap 3, Nikita Bedrin on lap 8 and Mansell on lap 9 when the Australian driver drifted offline and gifted Minì sixth.

“If you can just play it smart, and maybe wait for someone to do a mistake or get to penalty for some things like that, you just have to do your job and try to wait for others’ mistakes,” Minì said.

In the feature race, Minì was comfortably running second until lap 12, when Prema teammate Dino Beganovic overtook him at Turn 9 with the team’s encouragement. That move left him vulnerable to Browning, who got past him a lap later in the same spot, but Minì reclaimed the final podium position from the Williams junior on the penultimate lap, again at Turn 9.

It was Minì’s first podium of 2024 and his second at Melbourne after he likewise finished third in last year’s feature race, but he acknowledged that his race was not perfect.

“Also in Australia, I think it was not bad. It was just a bit of a shame for the feature race to have gotten [degradation] so early on. I think we were really quick pace-wise, especially [in] the practice and qualifying.”

A gap in the calendar

Almost two months separate rounds two and three of this year’s F3 championship. Outside of the in-season test in Barcelona from 16 to 18 April, many of the drivers will not get behind the wheel.

Despite the eight-week gap between races, Minì has kept his concentration on the championship and prepared himself for the races still to come. During breaks like this, he said it was “important to be consistent” and keep a regular schedule whether working on a racing simulator or partaking in physical training.

Feeder Series joined Minì for the interview at a training camp for All Road Management’s drivers in Portugal’s Algarve region. There were clear sunny skies above the garden patio of the drivers’ villa on a golfing estate, and all drivers at the camp wore matching shorts and T-shirts when we sat down to talk.

“It’s not so nice when you know that you have two months between the next race. You want to try and fix what you did in Australia, for example. It’s a really long time to wait. But in the end, it’s like that for every driver.” Minì said. “We have some days off, but pretty much almost every day I try to train. Maybe some days I train a bit less, some days a bit more, but I always try to do something every day,” he said.

Like many of his fellow F3 drivers, he has his own racing simulator at home, which enables him to spend time learning upcoming tracks and practise for future races.

“I also just use it also as a fun moment. Even though we are all quite competitive in the simulator because you still want to be the quickest, it’s not always easy,” he added.

Competitive sim racing on online video games such as iRacing and Assetto Corsa has become a popular hobby amongst racing drivers, with many carrying on their on-track rivalries to the games for fun.

Minì told Feeder Series that when he is not dedicating his time to his simulator or keeping up with F1 races, he also finds time to help out his father, who works as a mechanic, in his workshop. His father’s job and own passion for cars inspired him to take up racing.

Minì took advantage of his time in a real racecar by topping both the morning and afternoon sessions on the first day of F3’s Barcelona test.

Minì rounded out his break from racing by completing 100 laps in Formula E’s Berlin rookie test on Monday. Driving for Nissan, he placed ninth in the overall classification for the two sessions, ahead of former F3 rival Caio Collet.

A home race at Imola

F3 heads to Imola this weekend after a one-year absence, closing out the long break after the second round in Melbourne. Last year’s round at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari was cancelled because of torrential rainfall and severe flooding across the entire Emilia Romagna region, including at the circuit itself. The devastation caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage to the wider area and 17 fatalities.

For Minì, the event is the first of two opportunities for him to race in front of a home crowd in Italy this season, the other being the season finale held at Monza in late August and early September.

Minì and Fornaroli are the only drivers on the current grid to have two home races this season.

“Of course, it’s nice when you’re out of the car and you see all the Italian fans. In theory, there should be more fans for me than other tracks, but it’s not always a must. But it’s really, really nice just seeing all the people around you. Being an F1 weekend, it’s always really cool.”

Imola had brought Minì favourable results in the past. He took his fourth and final win and two second places there in 2020 to seal the Italian F4 title with a round to spare, while in 2022 it was the site of his first win in the Formula Regional European Championship.

“In Imola, I really like the track. I won the championship in F4 there, so it just brings me good memories,” he said. “It was really sad last year what happened, but hopefully this season, we get to have a good race there. I’m really excited.”

Interview by Jim Kimberley

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency